August 1947. Houses of Hindus were being burnt and their deafening cries filled the streets of Lahore, Pakistan. Before Basant Kishan Khanna and his family met the same fate, they had to pack their whole life and run for India. In just one night. They chose to leave everything and come back for it another day, when things were calm. Loading themselves in their car, they fled to India and from then onwards, became refugees. And as per the UN Refugee Agency, they were just a few among the 14 million people displaced during the India-Pakistan partition.
Upon reaching Amritsar, they were in despair. With nothing to call their own, Khanna was compelled to visit his home back in Lahore. One could do that with an escort and with special permission from the army. But it was futile because a Muslim family was already residing in the house, using what was once their’s. What could he say? Just give me the whole house? Disoriented despite the generosity of the Muslim family, he left with only his law books. One of the books is now a memorabilia that one can find in his granddaughter, and Chairman and Founder of the Arts and Culture Heritage Trust, Kishwar Desai’s initiative — National Partition Museum coming up at Town Hall, Amritsar, being set up to keep those stories alive for generations to come.
This story is what Desai’s nightmares are made of. “What if someone tells you that you have to leave your home and go away within an hour? What do you take, what do you leave behind? How do you decide? After all, it wasn’t like an earthquake or a flood or any other natural disaster had occurred. Just 30 km away was their home, but it was inaccessible to them,” says a vexed 59-year-old Desai, whose family since then moved to Amritsar. Nowadays, she fears another thing. All those who survived the partition are in their 80s and 90s, and we are on the brink of losing it all yet again. The memories and memorabilia will be lost unless something is done to preserve them. And this is the mammoth task Desai and her trust have taken on — to preserve the history of the partition.
The right time
Desai, an author who has been a journalist and still continues to write columns, naturally knows the importance of documentation and the idea of the museum occurred to her almost 50 years ago. “That time I think it was too early, the memories were still raw and people did not want to talk about it. I think the situation has changed now,” says London-based Desai. This is evident from the fact that on day one, when they opened their office in one of the wings of the iconic Town Hall in Amritsar, generously donated by the Punjab Government, she found an old 87-year-old man who had come all the way from Jalandhar in a bus. He brought along a book he had written in Gurmukhi, about all that his family and he went through at the time of partition. “At last, someone wants to know what I went through,” he said and left Desai in tears. So many such voices who have been silent all these years can find expression by sending in their memories either by narrating it themselves in an audio/video recording or sending whatever survived —from utensils to books, from newspapers to furniture — of the painful era to this first of its kind museum.
The right place
Amritsar, has a huge resonance with the partition story, feels Desai. Which is why, though they would have loved for the museum to be in Delhi (“but frankly, we couldn’t afford it,” she laughs) they chose Town Hall instead. It is right next to the Golden Temple, which sees about two lakh visitors every day. The wing donated by the Punjab Government is about 16,000 square feet with a large open space for events. “This is the first time that a museum is being installed in a public-private partnership,” she points out adding that they had to present their plan to the Chief Minister of Punjab, Parkash Singh Badal for approval.
Though she wants people to feel the emotional connect at the museum, that’s just one part of the story. “People need to understand that these kind of divisions, which prompted huge losses between communities that lived together, are extremely harmful. India is a melting pot despite its divisions so it is even more necessary to live in harmony,” and that’s what the museum will convey she tells us confidently.
Soni Razdan
actress and filmmaker
I found it really interesting for various reasons, one is that I have been working on a script for some time, set in the era of the partition. I have done a lot of research and I found it a very momentous occasion in our shared histories, which is something we are not taught about enough in school. I don’t think we still are, and I always wondered why. So many innocent people were massacred. It had repercussions for years afterwards, especially on girls. The ones who were raped were shunned by their families. It not just something that happened over a period of months, it was long drawn out with aftermaths on both sides of the border. Also, my mother was a victim of the Holocaust though she was a German and not Jewish. Her father was put in a concentration camp because he ran a paper against Hitler. There were a lot of connections between what was happening in India and what was happening in the West. Strangely, painful similarities. I understand from my family’s point of view, what it means to be displaced. Because my family then fled to England and started a new life there. Whether it’s England, Germany, Israel, Palestine, India, Pakistan, there was at that time a huge turmoil and it was all due to who you are, what your identity is, and which religion you belong to
Mahesh Bhatt
director and screenwriter
I don’t think any one in South Asia can look away from the partition of India-Pakistan. Those were the worst of times because we saw unimaginable human suffering, where brother turned against brother and unleashed such brutality. The very thought of it makes me shudder. The museum is important to preserve memories so that man can remind himself of what he is capable of. Though the low a man sinks to is also a reality, in the partition museum you will see tales of great human courage too, where human beings stood by human beings. What happened in 1947 and what’s going on now between India and Pakistan is the modified continuity of the same thing. Almost 69 years later, we still cannot put it out of our radius. I love this idea of the partition museum which is a thought finally being turned into reality. It’ll make you see that at times to go forward, you need to go back and that’s what the museum will provide. They say God is closest to those with broken hearts, when you sit down at the feet of those broken hearts, you listen to their experiences which no book, no work of literature, and no movie can provide